A mediaevalist trying to be a philosopher and a philosopher trying to be a mediaevalist write about theology, philosophy, scholarship, books, the middle ages, and especially the life, times, and thought of the Doctor Subtilis, the Blessed John Duns Scotus.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Read the Original - If You Can

Translated sources attract errors just as translated scriptures foment
heresies, and when the inexperienced attempt their own translations, the
results can be even worse.

Although it is off the
topic of this blog, the review from which the quotation above was taken may
be of interest. It exposes recent amateurish histories of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and John Cabot--all explorers of the New World. The critique has distinct similarities to
critiques found
here of amateurish theologians who attempt a coherent historical
narrative of "how we got here" without
bothering to read the original sources. The problem is similar for both
groups: pastry-makers posing as scholars convince others by the
tastiness of their concoctions. The author concludes his book review:

I could multiply the dispiriting litany of errors, but it is more
interesting to try to understand what drives these writers to parade
their inadequacies in the marketplace. It is tempting to blame
postmodernism, which has blurred the difference between drivel and
truth; or the popularity of television-history, where no standards of
veracity or scholarship apply; or the temptations aroused by vulgar
sensationalists, who have made fortunes by proclaiming the peripeties of
the Holy Grail and "proving" that the medieval Chinese discovered Rhode
Island. I suspect, however, that the very virtues of my discipline are
responsible for the vices of the writers who abuse it. Because history
is the people's discipline, books about it are relatively
salable—invitingly so, to indolent cupidity. History's accessibility to
non-specialists makes it seem dangerously, delusively easy.

Academic historians tend to welcome
recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the
intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never
show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen. I am afraid it is time for
historians to wipe the smiles from our jaws and start biting back. If
escape from the poverty of your own imagination is your reason for
exploiting the stories history offers, or if you are taking refuge from
another discipline in the belief that history is easy, without bothering
to do the basic work, you will deserve to fail.

4 comments:

Doesn't surprise me one bit. This guy made some pretty stupid comments at a Marenbon lecture on abelard a few years ago. He kept criticizing Marenbon about a perfectly reasonable translation and went on and on for ages and it had nothing to do with any actual point Marenbon was trying to make.

In my experience the very opposite is the case: academic historians absolutely revile popular writers, authors of "social studies" text books for primary and secondary education, and glib academics from other fields. While an undergraduate in History, nearly every historian we read in a course on Historiography evinced such a view -- and often with a good amount of bile. Frankly, I didn't blame them. They spend countless hours straining their eyes over half-faded fragments of texts only to be outsold by some boor peddling rags he wrote in a fortnight.

And while I do not sympathize with Fernández-Armesto's own glib dismissal of all things postmodern -- nor even, if you will forgive me, every point that those affiliated with Radical Orthodoxy make -- he is right to argue that such people make gross and embarrassing errors when it comes to history. Frankly, this is odd when you think about it. With their abandonment of Enlightenment reason as tradition-transcendent, you would think it would mean more of an emphasis on good historical work, not less.